Indian will get 2nd awacs on Thursday

India is going to have second Airborne early Warning And Control system(AWACS)on thursady. This AWACS is imported from Isreal. This 2nd AWACS will arrive at Jamnagar and than it will deployed agra soon..By 2 AWACS, eastern and western both will be monitored at same time, siad officials.

Bramhos (Naval version) succesfully fired...

Just got off the phone with BrahMos CEO Dr A Sivathanu Pillai, delighted with the 11.30AM test of the Naval BrahMos supersonic cruise missile in a vertical launch from the Indian Navy destroyer INS Ranvir. Dr Pillai reveals the test was specifically aimed at testing the missile's accuracy when its flight path was infused with "diversionary manoueuvers" to mask the general direction of the launcher warship. The missile, vertically launched from a Vertical Launcher built for the BrahMos, was rolled in all directions successfully before before it smashed into the hull of INS Meen a decommissioned target vessel.

IAF to carry out air-to-air exercises with France, UK

Expanding its ties with global air powers, the Indian Air Force will carry out air-to-air exercises with France and United Kingdom this year.

"Firstly, the 'Garud' series exercise with the French would be held in France in June and the 'Indradhanush' series with the British Royal Air Force would be held at the Kalaikunda air base in West Bengal in October," Defence Ministry sources said here.

At the fourth edition of the 'Garud', IAF will be represented by its air superiority Sukhoi-30 fighter jets and the Il-76 heavy-lift transport aircraft in the aerial wargames with France.

"The Il-78 mid-air refuelling aircraft, which have helped in expanding the strategic reach of the IAF, are also likely to join the Indian contingent there," they added.

The French side is expected to field its latest Rafale fighters and various versions of the Mirage-200 fighters, sources said.

The Rafale is being offered by the French to the IAF for its requirements for the USD 11 billion contract for 126 multi-role combat aircraft.

The first Indo-French exercise was held in 2003 at the Gwalior air base and the second one was organised in France in 2005. The third was held at Kalaikunda air base in 2007.

Indian Navy aircraft crashes into residential area

A trainer aircraft with the Indian Navy's aerobatics team, Sagar Pawan, crashed into a two-storied building during an air show here on Wednesday.

Two naval pilots, Maurya and his co-pilot Nair were killed, police commissioner A K Khan said. The pilots had come from Goa where they were based. He was last seen in the morning by hotel staffers in the coffee shop having breakfast. Even while sipping his tea, he was seen gesticulating his hands to show how a plane could go up or down. The naval team comprising nine members had checked into a Hyderabad hotel on February 27.

The aircraft, an HJT-16 Kiran Mk2 trainer built by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, crashed a couple of minutes before noon in the Bowenpally locality near the old Begumpet Airport in the heart of the city. The police and the fire brigade had difficulty reaching the congested crash site.

Four people in the building, a part of which was badly damaged, were injured, as the plane fell on the side of the complex. Two of the injured are believed to be in serious condition and have been shifted to hospital. The debris from the crash fell on a car, crushing it. The building has developed cracks and residents are being evacuated.

The planes were showing acrobatic maneuvers when the incident took place. One of the aircraft, part of the navy's aerobatics team that uses four trainers, was unable to pull up from a dive and went into a spiral as the planes were breaking away from the formation and going in different directions. The acrobatics by the planes had begun even as Praful Patel, minister for civil aviation, was talking on the rostrum.

Thousands of people were enjoying the spectacle when disaster struck, sending thick clouds of smoke into the air. According to witnesses, the plane crashed into the mobile phone towers on top of the building. They heard a loud boom, after which the plane went down.

There are conflicting eye witness accounts. An old lady - a vegetable vendor - who was laying chilies on the ground close to the spot said that suddenly a boy of a pilot fell besides her, even as the plane went forward and crashed into the building. Hundreds of eye witnesses saw the plane fall and go up in flame.

On the way it snapped at electricity wires. There was leakage from the fuselage and whole area was covered with aviation fuel, putting the entire area to the risk of fire. But later fire brigade official spread foam to prevent a fire. One of the pilots tried to open his parachute while ejecting. Probably the height was too little and therefore the parachute did not open. The unopened parachute was seen at the site by eye witnesses.

Said Ashok, who was in his house at the time: "I was inside the house when I heard a loud noise and I came out to see flames."

An hour after the crash, Praful Patel addressing a pre-scheduled press conference had no details about the crash. "I hope for the best,” he said. "I can’t give you any information. I have none,” he added.

Present at the airshow were the whos who of Indian aviation industry including minister Praful Patel, Jet Airways boss Naresh Goyal, Kingfishers Vijay Mallaya, Air India MD Arvind Jadhav, civil aviation secretary Madvana Nambiar, GMR boss G M Rao, GVK boss G V Krishna Reddy and dozens of representatives of Boeing, Raytheon and other companies. Commander Maurya who was commanding the flight belonged to the naval establishment INS Hansa in Goa.

Hyderabad’s Begumpet airport is used for VIP and private flights. The area where the crash occurred falls under the jurisdiction of the Secunderabad Cantonment Board. The crash, however, took place in a civil area under the board.

Gujarat builds 1st survey catamarans for Indian navy

Gujarat’s shipbuilding company, Alcock Ashdown, has broken into a new league. The Gujarat government-owned PSU has built the ‘hull form’ of two catamarans for the Indian Navy, the first catamarans for hydrographic survey to be inducted by the navy.
The first ship christened, INS Makar, was launched in early February and the second, INS Meen, was launched early on Tuesday morning at the shipyard in Bhavnagar.

With this advanced hydrographic suite, the Indian Navy will become one of the few navies in the world to have this kind of survey capability, and Alcock Ashdown has emerged as a leader in integrating complex systems. The vessels will be stationed in Vishakhapatnam. They are part of a fleet of six vessels being built by the shipyard for the Indian Navy at a total cost of Rs 800 crore.
Managing director of Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation and the shipyard, VS Gadhvi, told DNA that this is a significant achievement. He explained that this crucial assignment was not awarded to AAGL by the Indian Navy because it’s a government company, but through a competitive bidding process in which private players had also participated.

Executive director, naval projects, Subir Sengupta, says the primary role of the vessels will be to conduct coastal hydrographic survey of major and minor ports and harbours, their approaches and limited oceanographic survey.

MoD sidelines pvt sector in crucial defence project

Policy turnaround will give BEL Rs 10,000-cr project without tendering



The Ministry of Defence is poised to deliver a disheartening blow to India’s nascent private defence industry. After inviting private companies into the Rs 10,000-crore project for developing the Indian Army’s futuristic Tactical Communications System (TCS), the ministry is abandoning competitive bidding and handing over the project to a defence public sector undertaking, Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL). The reason cited by the ministry: Secrecy.

Left in the lurch are six private companies — Wipro, Mahindra Defence Systems, Tata Power, L&T, Rolta and HCL — which the defence ministry had vetted in detail before categorising the TCS project as “Make — High Tech”. In this category, the government funds 80 per cent of the R&D cost, while the selected vendor contributes 20 per cent. Also sidelined for the TCS are two non-defence PSUs (DPSUs), ECIL and ITI.

The TCS will be a fully mobile network, which can be transported anywhere during war, even into enemy territory, providing the military with a backbone network on which it can communicate and transfer data. The TCS operates much like a cellular phone network, but with two major differences. While cellular phone transmission towers are fixed onto buildings, the TCS’s exchanges and switches will be installed in high-mobility vehicles, allowing them to be transported and set up anywhere. Second, messages sent out over the TCS cannot be easily intercepted or jammed since they will not remain on a single frequency; instead, transmissions will hop frequencies, dozens of times every second, in a pre-programmed sequence.

It is to maintain the secrecy of this “hopping algorithm”, or the sequence in which the TCS hops frequencies, that BEL is being handed over the project. The defence ministry is citing a new cyber policy formulated by the apex National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) — a secretive body that functions under the Cabinet Secretariat, overseeing electronic intelligence. The NTRO had mandated that the “hopping algorithm” must remain the exclusive preserve of the government.

The NTRO’s interpretation has been shaped by guidelines issued by Shekhar Dutt, while he was deputy national security advisor. Now the governor of Chhattisgarh, Dutt had earlier served as defence secretary and as secretary of defence production, with close and longstanding links to BEL.

Now, based on that NTRO interpretation, a special defence ministry committee is about to recommend that the TCS procurement be categorised as, “Make — Strategic, Complex and Security Sensitive Systems”. Under the Defence Procurement Policy, this will automatically gift the TCS project to DRDO and BEL.

The six private sector rivals for the TCS project are fighting back against what they consider an unfair proposal. Last Wednesday and Thursday, they huddled with industry bodies, Ficci and CII, formulating their response to the defence ministry. Their argument: If the ministry ignores the private sector’s world-acknowledged competence in software, IT and communications, and continues sidelining them to benefit DPSUs, it will be hard to convince shareholders to continue investing into defence.

“We fully agree with the need for security,” explains a senior executive from one of the TCS contenders, “but secrecy can be fully preserved by reserving the ‘hopping algorithm’ for DRDO and BEL. To safeguard the secrecy of a Rs 20,000-microchip, which contains the ‘hopping algorithm’, the ministry is handing them an entire Rs 10,000 crore project.”

A defence ministry Feasibility Study Group for the TCS has already discussed the issue of secrecy last year. It was decided that top-secret algorithms in the TCS would be developed by the DRDO’s Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), but the private sector could develop the rest of the project.

Indian private companies have played pivotal roles in some of India’s most secret defence projects. Larsen & Toubro, one of the companies being sidelined in the TCS project, built most of India’s nuclear submarine, INS Arihant, and will have a similar role in building successors to the Arihant. Another private company, Tata Power, which built crucial command systems for the Arihant, also designed the core of the top secret Samyukta Electronic Warfare system.

The Kelkar Committee had recommended that such companies, with a track record and potential in defence production, should be designated Raksha Udyog Ratnas (RURs) and treated at par with DPSUs in the award of projects like the TCS. But, in an inexplicable volte-face after preparing a short list of candidate companies, the defence ministry decided against nominating RURs.

If BEL is awarded the TCS project, that windfall will lead to many more. Applying the NTRO’s logic to other command and control projects in the pipeline — such as the Battlefield Management System (BMS); the Operational Data Link (ODL); and the Net-Centric Operations (NCO) system — BEL seems likely to be awarded all of these on a single-vendor basis.

The Ministry of Defence has not responded to an emailed questionnaire from Business Standard on the TCS.

“It is particularly ironic that BEL is expected to safeguard security, when it is well known that BEL systems are built mainly from foreign components,” points out an official from a private company that is bidding for the TCS. “BEL’s Artillery Combat Command and Control System (ACCCS), a system similar to the TCS, has computers and software from Israeli company, Elbit. Whether these have come with malware or switches to render the entire system inoperable will only be known in the future.”

Parliament’s Standing Committee on Defence, too, has raised concerns about such “false indigenization”, where DPSUs have allegedly fronted for foreign companies. The Standing Committee’s report of December 2009 notes that, “a sizeable proportion of procurement takes place through the ordnance factories and DPSUs, which are indigenous sources, but have to depend on imports for manufacturing the finished product.”

Vayu Shakti 2010 pics